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In 1891 the Société des Gens de Lettres commissioned Rodin to make a monument to the great and prolific author Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850). Rodin promised to deliver a bronze figure three meters (118 1/8 inches) in height within eighteen months, to be placed at the Palais-Royal in Paris. He worked on the project for the next seven years, completely immersed in Balzac's life and works.

Rodin rejected his first set of figure studies, naturalistic in inspiration, because he felt his attempts to recreate the writer's outward appearance would never succeed in conveying his genius. His Naked Balzac (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1971-142-1) of 1892 represented a shift as the artist moved in the direction of expressive dynamism. In the final version, Rodin simplified the figure to a monolithic form wrapped in the monk's robe that was Balzac's favorite working attire. He portrayed the face of a visionary full of creative force, "a genius who, in his small room, reconstructs piece by piece a whole society to make it vibrate tumultuously."

Exhibited in 1898, Balzac provoked a violent scandal and was rejected by the commissioning body. Although Rodin considered it his most important work, and its revolutionary character was recognized by influential authors and artists, the sculptor himself experienced the rejection as a defeat. In 1939, twenty-two years after Rodin's death, a full-scale bronze of Balzac was finally placed at the crossing of the boulevards Montparnasse and Raspail in Paris.

In 1891 Rodin was selected to create a monument to the renowned French playwright and novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). Seven years and over fifty preparatory studies later, Rodin exhibited the final model for the statue at the Paris Salon of 1898. It immediately became the subject of an immense scandal; critics described the sculpture as a block of salt left out in the rain, a dripping candle, and a snowman in a straightjacket. The committee that had commissioned the work rejected it, and Rodin was called upon to make significant changes to satisfy public opinion. He refused and moved the portrait to his home at Meudon, where it remained throughout his life. The full-sized monument was finally accepted and installed in Paris in 1939.

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